Ma'alesh; no matter; never mind; what can you do but accept things as they are? Ma'alesh, your pot overturned in the fire; ma'alesh, your prize mare died; ma'alesh, you lost all your possessions and half your family. The word was the everyday essence of Islam - which itself, after all, means "submission.

That's what tears are for, you know, to wash away the fear and cool the hate.

Men do, I've found, accept the most errant nonsense from a well dressed woman

You cannot help being a female, and I should be something of a fool were I to discount your talents merely because of their housing.

Using insult instead of argument is the sign of a small mind.

I slept in the bedroom used by Sabine Baring-Goulds wife when I was researching The Moor, and later the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.

Why the devil was my husband positively grinning - and with what looked remarkably like relief?